In the recent past beverage ingredient containing capsules have found widespread application for producing different types of beverages, such as for example tea or coffee, and other liquid comestibles. These capsules are designed for a use in connection with a dedicated beverage production device that is provided with means for feeding a liquid into the interior of the capsule such that the liquid interacts with the ingredients contained in the capsule, the result of the interaction being a produced beverage or other liquid comestibles.
Thereby, it is known that in particular the quality and/or appearance of the resulting beverage strongly depend on the operation parameters of the beverage production device used in conjunction with the capsule. Therefore, some of the known machines are provided with sophisticated control systems setting all kind of operation parameters for the beverage production process. These parameters can include e.g. the temperature and the volume of the liquid supplied to the interior of the capsule as well as the time duration of the interaction of the liquid with the ingredients contained to the capsule.
It is further known, that capsules can be provided with identification means in order to enable the beverage production machine to identify the capsule within the device and set the operational parameters accordingly. WO 2007/072413 also discloses cartridges for preparing beverages comprising a beverage ingredient container associated to a connector wearing a recognition code. The recognition code can provide information about the brewing method. The connector is also configured for receiving a fluid and mixing and/or brewing the beverage ingredient and the fluid within its body.
EP 1 950 150 for example proposes a beverage ingredient capsule that is provided with an identification member designed for being mechanically contacted from sensing means of a device in order to control operation parameters of an associated beverage production machine.
However, the known identification means of the prior artS suffer the disadvantage that the identification means are directly associated to each capsule during manufacturing. Thereby, since individual identification means have to be provided to the capsule, dependent for example on the large variety of ingredients and/or size of the respective capsule, the manufacturing process of the capsule and the identification means is very complex and costly.
Besides in 2007/072413 due to the mixing of the fluid and the beverage ingredient inside the connector body, the latter must be thrown away after it has been used for hygienic issues.
Accordingly, a problem of the present invention is to provide identification means which enables the provision of such identification means independent of the capsule manufacturing process. Furthermore, it is desired to provide reliable capsule identification means to a beverage preparation system that can be produced in a cost-effective manufacturing process.
Moreover, particularly in the field of capsules containing tea respectively leaf tea, it has been found that the consumers can be reluctant with regard to predefined operational parameters of the beverage preparation system. This is due to the fact that specifically tea consumers seem to attach great importance to the individual beverage production parameters that highly influence the quality and the flavor of the resulting tea beverage. Therefore, there is a need to provide individual identification respectively programming means that enable the consumer to choose the preparation parameters to be applied for a specific beverage to be prepared independently of predefined parameters of a beverage production machine.
Moreover, there exists a desire of the consumer to customize his/her preferences in terms of beverage preparation respectively process parameters like temperature, cup size, strength of the beverage, brewing time, flow rate of the liquid etc., associated to the identification means.
These objects are solved by means of the features of the independent claims. The dependent claims develop further the central idea of the invention.